Laughing Taco due in spring
Laughing Taco, a taqueria by James Beard Awards finalist Justin Carlisle and his wife, Lucia Muñoz, is expected to open sometime in May in Walker’s Point.
It would be the third restaurant for Carlisle, who owns the fine-dining Ardent and the ramen shop Red Light Ramen, both on N. Farwell Ave. on the east side.
Laughing Taco, 1033 S. 1st St., is the first restaurant that he’s collaborated on with his wife, who is a native of Monterrey, Mexico.
The restaurant is patterned after taquerias in Muñoz’s hometown. “It’s something she loved, growing up,” Carlisle said.
He described their counter-service restaurant as a “quick grab-and-go,” akin to tacos a diner might get from a street vendor. (It will have drinks for diners who’d like to stay awhile, though.)
“Extremely simple, extremely straightforward, with high-quality ingredients,” Carlisle said.
Laughing Taco will have a couple of vegetarian tacos — fillings to be determined — plus beef from Carlisle’s father’s farm in Sparta and a trompo, the vertical rotisserie stacked with meat, for pork al pastor. Tacos will be served on smaller corn tortillas, with onion and cilantro.
Carlisle said he hopes to eventually make the tortillas with corn from the family farm.
The restaurant will sell bottled beer and tequilabased slushy drinks, as well as Mexican sodas and other soft drinks.
Because it will have no more than 20 seats, Laughing Taco is expected to sell a fair amount of takeout.
The restaurant is in retail space in the newly opened Trio apartments, a series of three buildings with 120 units on W. Washington St. Laughing Taco will be at 1st and Washington.
The restaurant, Carlisle said, will be decorated mostly in white, “a very simple restaurant.”
Equipment for the restaurant has arrived and work is progressing, Carlisle said. The taqueria might open in April or May, he said, and would serve lunch and dinner, likely from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. four or five days a week to start. Delivery might be added later.
While Walker’s Point lately has become home to a long list of new restaurants, it’s long been home to a number of Mexican restaurants that serve tacos, among other dishes. Did that give the couple pause?
They discussed it, he said, but added, “there’s no taqueria like it.”
At Georgie Porgie’s
Customers’ main wish for Georgie Porgie’s is coming true — the Oak Creek burger, gyros and custard restaurant is expanding by 22 seats, and it will add bottled craft beer while it’s at it.
The restaurant, in a plaza at 9555 S. Howell Ave., is growing into a vacant storefront to the east and calling the addition George’s Garage.
It will have a vintage-garage theme, tying in with the classic car nights it hosts in summer. (The name is a tribute to the founder and family patriarch, George Liapis, who died in 2014.)
Peter Liapis, who owns and operates Georgie Porgie’s with his brother, Lou, said his father always wanted to expand the business.
George’s Garage, with its four to six kinds of beer to start with, will offer a more adult atmosphere to supplement the tree-fort atmosphere for young families in the original space, Peter Liapis indicated.
“It gives a choice for customers,” he said.
Adding craft beer might appeal to a new segment of customers, Liapis said.
Besides, he added, he likes to take a burger home and have it with a beer. “It just goes so well,” he said. “It’s nice to have one beer and enjoy your meal.”
Work started about a month ago on the addition. Liapis expects George’s Garage will open in midMay.
Georgie Porgie’s first opened in 1991 in Oak Creek. A second restaurant is in Mount Pleasant.
Hotel Madrid brunch
Brunch starts this weekend at Hotel Madrid in Walker’s Point: in the Vermutería 600 bar, the restaurant Bodegón and — as the weather allows, starting on Easter Sunday — on the sizable patio beside the building, 600 S. 6th St.
This weekend is the soft opening for brunch, which will be 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
Spokesman Sean Wille said the finer-dining Bodegón will be more unbuttoned for brunch. The menu reflects brunch comfort foods, with pricing more in line with the bar’s nightly food menu.
Some of the menu items diners will find are eggs Benedict with Serrano ham; chorizo sausage gravy and biscuits, with a poached egg and ramp marmalade; root vegetable hash; peanut butter and rhubarb jelly French toast, maple-braised bacon and blueberries; and Fruity Pebbles pancakes.
Lunch items include a roasted beet, grapefruit and fennel salad and the “Walk of Shame” burger, with cheddar, bacon and a fried egg with Sriracha mayonnaise.
Entrée prices range from $9 to $14.
Cocktails at brunch will include vodka, gin or tequila Bloody Mary, Mimosas with fresh-squeezed orange juice and Bellini with house peach puree.
The bar will remain open between brunch and the start of dinner at 5 p.m. on the weekends.
Hotel Madrid will take reservations for brunch inside; outside on the patio, it’s first come, first served. For reservations: (414) 4889146 or hotel madridmke.com.
Lunch at the Cheel
The Cheel, the Thiensville restaurant that specializes in food from Nepal and other Himalayan countries, now is open for lunch on Saturdays and is adding new menu items for spring.
The restaurant at 105 S. Main St. now is open from Monday through Saturday for lunch and dinner, starting at 11:30 a.m.
Some of the new dishes on the spring menu, which debuts Monday, are sukuti sandheko ($12), wild boar jerky in olive oil, scallion, cilantro and onion, and chatamari, rice-flour crepe with seasoned ground goat ($12) or lamb ($11), an egg and cilantro microgreens.
Also on the new menu are khashi kofta ($25) — goat meatballs with rice and yellow dal — and ema datshi ($9), a Bhutanese cheese soup with shiitake mushrooms, onions and peppers. The soup is served with tingmo, a Tibetan steamed bun.